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Stellaris Infernals brings the heat to the strategy game's universe, and I can't wait to burn it all down
AppWizard
November 25, 2025

Stellaris Infernals brings the heat to the strategy game’s universe, and I can’t wait to burn it all down

The Stellaris Infernals Species Pack introduces new playable alien races adapted to volcanic worlds, including bird-like, crocodilian, and insectoid forms. It features a new Crisis Path with the Galactic Hyperthermia mechanic, allowing players to terraform stars into red giants and create Entropy Conduits. The DLC also adds four new Civics focused on fire and heat, such as the Fire Cult and Scorched World Heralds. The new species possess the Thermophilic trait, thriving on hot planets and consuming alloys instead of traditional food sources, but they struggle on Arctic worlds. The DLC is available for purchase on Steam.
With the survival feel of Valheim and daunting dungeons, this medieval city builder finally has a release date
AppWizard
October 27, 2025

With the survival feel of Valheim and daunting dungeons, this medieval city builder finally has a release date

Dungeons and Kingdoms is a medieval city-building adventure game that combines settlement management with action RPG gameplay. Players manage a group of refugee settlers on a mysterious island, facing challenges such as predators and ancient ruins while building their settlement. The game features survival mechanics, including foraging, crafting, and resource harvesting, with over 500 unique building pieces available for creative expression. Players can terraform the environment and engage in combat reminiscent of soulslike games. The game has generated nearly 200,000 wishlists after its demo at Steam Next Fest and is set to launch in early access on November 17, priced at .99.
With Manor Lords' city building and Valheim's survival action, this beautiful new ARPG just shot to the top of my wishlist
AppWizard
September 15, 2025

With Manor Lords’ city building and Valheim’s survival action, this beautiful new ARPG just shot to the top of my wishlist

Dungeons and Kingdoms is a new game that combines high-stakes combat with city-building mechanics. Players take on the role of a leader guiding refugees to a new home in a lush paradise. The gameplay includes crafting, foraging, and battling low-level creatures, with the potential to recruit animal companions. Players can terraform the land, build various structures, and share designs on the Steam Workshop, with over 500 building types available. The game features dungeons with challenges and a variety of enemies, emphasizing strategic combat. It has a pixel art style inspired by games like Valheim and Old School Runescape. Dungeons and Kingdoms is scheduled for release in Steam Early Access in Q4 of 2025, with a demo available from October 13 to October 20. A wishlist option is also available for interested players.
Chill simulation strategy game Plan B: Terraform has hit 1.0
AppWizard
August 30, 2025

Chill simulation strategy game Plan B: Terraform has hit 1.0

Plan B: Terraform has officially launched its 1.0 version after a successful early access period. Players aim to transform a barren planet into a habitat for humanity by constructing automated infrastructures that support the growth of new cities. The gameplay involves introducing greenhouse gases, melting ice caps, and nurturing ecosystems with liquid water, greenery, and wildlife. The game offers a laid-back approach, allowing players to thoughtfully build production chains without the pressure of failure. It is available on Steam.
silver Android smartphone
Tech Optimizer
August 5, 2025

Building a job search engine with PostgreSQL’s advanced search features

Job search platforms connect employers and candidates through advanced search engines that analyze structured and unstructured data. These platforms require robust database technologies for executing complex queries, full-text and semantic searches, and geospatial functionalities. A modern job search engine consists of a data repository that stores job listings and candidate profiles, and a search engine that facilitates bidirectional searches. Key features of an effective job search engine include: - **Full-text search**: Provides lexical matching for job titles and skills, supporting exact phrase matching and typo-tolerant searches. - **Semantic search**: Uses vector-based similarity to understand context and relationships beyond literal terms. - **Geospatial search**: Incorporates geographic considerations to find opportunities within specific distances. PostgreSQL serves as both a data repository and search engine, supporting full-text search, semantic search via the pgvector extension, and geospatial queries using the PostGIS extension. The job search engine utilizes PostgreSQL to manage job listings and candidate profiles, enabling real-time searches across millions of entries. The data model for a job search engine includes tables for jobs and resumes, with columns for full-text search vectors, semantic vectors, and geographical locations. PostgreSQL's full-text search capabilities include tokenization, dictionaries for language-aware parsing, and ranking functions for relevance. Advanced features such as proximity search, simple and weighted ranking, and fuzzy matching enhance search accuracy. Vector embeddings represent text in high-dimensional space, allowing for semantic searches that recognize similar roles or skills. PostgreSQL supports vector similarity searches with specialized indexing methods like IVFFlat and HNSW for efficient querying. Geospatial search capabilities in PostgreSQL enable location-aware job searches, allowing candidates to find jobs within commuting distances. Combining different search techniques, such as full-text and semantic searches, provides more relevant results. Performance optimization features in PostgreSQL address challenges related to computational complexity, indexing overhead, and concurrent query loads. The architecture discussed is applicable to various applications beyond job search platforms, including e-commerce, real estate, content recommendation systems, travel, and healthcare provider matching.
This week in PC games: Mecha Break, ICE protest charity bundles and vibrant ostrich farming
AppWizard
June 30, 2025

This week in PC games: Mecha Break, ICE protest charity bundles and vibrant ostrich farming

This week, several new PC gaming releases are available as a way to escape the heat in the UK. Notable titles include: - LEO: Low Earth Orbit: Features lounge jazz and unique gameplay where guns propel players away from targets. - Rekindled Trails: Focuses on wilderness exploration and grid-puzzle trading. - Monster Hunter Wilds: An update is launching today for this title. - Seven Days Until Morning: An artsy horror game set on Pluto, exploring the end of humanity. - Mecha Break: A free-to-play game about dismantling mechs with customizable anime girl pilots. - FLOWorlds: Players terraform hexagonal planets by dropping frozen shards from orbit. - No ICE in California Charity Bundle: Launching today, proceeds will benefit organizations supporting migrants in the USA. Additionally, the Treehouse team is dealing with various challenges during the heatwave, including investigating the fall of Hytale and exploring new features.
How Uniphore achieved 30% cost savings by modernizing Windows servers on AWS
Winsage
June 20, 2025

How Uniphore achieved 30% cost savings by modernizing Windows servers on AWS

Uniphore is an AI innovation company that faced challenges with its legacy Windows Server infrastructure, which was costly and raised security concerns due to its end-of-support status. To modernize, Uniphore utilized Amazon Web Services (AWS) for containerization and cloud-native solutions, achieving a 30% reduction in costs and improved operational capabilities. The migration involved transitioning from 50 bare-metal Windows Server 2008 R2 instances to a Linux environment on AWS, optimizing call-center analytics workloads and enabling better training of large language models. The modernization strategy included three key areas: application modernization through refactoring and containerization, a custom data migration solution using Type 2 hypervisor technology, and a cloud infrastructure setup with Amazon EC2, Amazon EKS, Amazon EFS, and Amazon S3. The migration was executed in three phases: deploying the hypervisor and DataSync agent, secure data migration and validation, and production cutover with application deployment. Best practices adopted during the process included Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform, CI/CD pipelines using GitLab, comprehensive monitoring with DATADOG and CloudWatch, and enforcement of AWS Backup policies. The modernization resulted in benefits such as improved scalability and performance, flexibility and portability of applications, enhanced security and compliance, efficient data management, reduced operational overhead, and significant cost savings.
Minecraft's Latest Update Adds Several 'Exciting' World Options
AppWizard
May 9, 2025

Minecraft’s Latest Update Adds Several ‘Exciting’ World Options

Minecraft has released a new update for the Bedrock Editions that introduces "flat world presets," allowing players to choose from various configurations, including 'Classic Flat' and 'Redstone Ready.' Players can create flat worlds by enabling flat world mode and selecting a preset from the Advanced Tab on the Create New World screen. The available presets are: - Classic Flat - Tunneler’s Dream - Water World - Overworld - Snowy Kingdom - Bottomless Pit - Desert - Redstone Ready The update also includes other features and bug fixes, as well as ongoing development of a graphics upgrade called Vibrant Visuals. Further details are available on Minecraft's feedback webpage.
Digest #162: IBM Acquires HashiCorp, No TCP/UDP, GitHub Data Theft, FinOps Future, Postgres Graph, AWS Config, Airflow, Kubernetes, Nginx, Terraform & More!
Tech Optimizer
March 5, 2025

Digest #162: IBM Acquires HashiCorp, No TCP/UDP, GitHub Data Theft, FinOps Future, Postgres Graph, AWS Config, Airflow, Kubernetes, Nginx, Terraform & More!

IBM has finalized its acquisition of HashiCorp. Concerns have emerged about the security of GitHub modifications, with reports indicating that thousands may compromise user data. A recent court case involving SQL injection highlights the importance of robust security measures in database management. CPU usage has surged by 3,200%. The tutorials section includes guides on utilizing Postgres as a graph database, automating cost checks with AWS Config, reducing AWS Glue expenses, navigating Kubernetes audit log challenges, mastering slicing SLOs, implementing advanced Nginx hardening techniques, exploring Amazon EKS auto mode with Terraform, leveraging GitHub Copilot for Azure DevOps, and enhancing infrastructure provisioning skills. Open-source projects highlighted include Yaak, Telescope, AtomixDB, PG Capture, TFBuddy, Globstar, and Tach.
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